Foundations Draft Week 5: Trends, Highlights, and Card Insights

Another week of Foundations has passed and with it, we’ll take a look at what’s been happening in the format.

Player Interest Over Time

Interest in Foundations has dropped significantly in the last week, which was to be expected given that a new set, Pioneer Masters, was released. To put it in numbers, week 4 of the format had 122,876 games logged on 17Lands, while week 5 only had 56,578, which is a decrease of 54%.

Pioneer Masters saw a total of 105,057 in that time frame, so in total the number of Premier Draft games played on Arena the last week actually increased. However, with fewer games recorded for Foundations, the smaller dataset means that trends and insights from the data become less statistically reliable. Smaller sample sizes increase the influence of variance, so conclusions about win rates, archetype trends, and card evaluations should be interpreted cautiously.

Shifts in Color Preferences and Win Rates

Looking at the color popularity, we see that the trends from the previous week have continued. Green is still gaining popularity, while most other colors have decreased slightly.

In terms of win rates, some outliers from last week seem to have corrected themselves. Red and Green still remain the top performing colors this week.

Please note that the win rate axis of the graph is scaled up drastically to better display differences. This scaling might make the differences appear more significant than they actually are. Given the smaller sample size this week, it’s even more important to keep in mind that random fluctuations have a larger impact.

Archetype Performance

Next let’s have a look at the performance of each color pair. The following charts have been sorted by win rate this week.

A couple of things to note:

• Each green deck saw a slight increase in popularity.
• The top 3 performing decks are all red
• Esper (White, Blue, Black) color pairs are still the most popular
• White/Black’s popularity has decreased slightly while at the same time win rate increased
• Blue/Green’s exceptional win rate should be taken with caution, as it is based on only 2,259 games.

Cards of the Week

Let’s round this up by looking at some cards that stood out this week.

ALSA Movers

Looking at ALSA changes from last week to this week, we see Ambush Wolf as a winner with a decrease of 0.22. The rest of the top contenders in this category further support the increasing popularity of Gruul (a detailed overview of Gruul in Foundations can be found here).

On the other side, we have Balmor, Battlemage Captain as an example of a card with a high ALSA increase this week, signaling a drop in popularity. Swiftwater Cliffs is also on the list, suggesting that players are avoiding Izzet even further.

Gem and Junk of the Week

As this week's Gem, we have Inspiration from Beyond. With a game-in-hand win rate of 57.2% and an ALSA of 7.19, it is currently the most underrated card in the format. It’s mostly Dimir that’s interested in this card, but if you’re in that color pair, you should definitely consider it.

On the other side, we have Phyrexian Arena as Junk of the week. While some content creators were praising the comeback of this classic, the stats tell a different story. With a win rate of 51.48% and an ALSA of 2.56, Phyrexian Arena is currently the most overrated card in the format. Its growing popularity, as the fifth-biggest ALSA gainer this week, further highlights this trend.

Conclusion

The release of Pioneer Masters has significantly reduced interest in Foundations, resulting in a smaller sample size and less reliable statistical analysis. Nevertheless, we still observe some movement in the metagame, with red and green performing at their peak. We will have to see next week if the format can recover in popularity a bit, or if it’s better to skip a weekly update in order to collect more data.

What are your thoughts on Week 5? Have you noticed similar trends, or do you see things differently? Let me know on Bluesky, and happy drafting!